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/ 28 February 2007
South Africa fully supports the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor’s decision to seek summonses for two suspects accused of war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region, a top government official said on Wednesday. But Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad warned it was too early to tell what effect the ICC action would have on long-term peace prospects in Sudan.
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/ 28 February 2007
The African Union appealed on Wednesday for urgent funding to activate a peacekeeping mission aimed at stabilising Somalia, where an insurgency is brewing after a war over the New Year. The AU wants to put an 8 000-strong force of nine battalions in Somalia for six months, then hand over to the United Nations.
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/ 28 February 2007
European jet maker Airbus is set to axe 10Â 000 of its 56Â 000 workforce as part of a cost-cutting operation to lift it out of a financial crisis. The company said on Wednesday it will cut the jobs over four years: 4Â 300 in France, 3Â 700 in Germany, 1Â 600 in Britain and 400 in Spain.
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/ 28 February 2007
The Scorpions continued a search of the JCI offices in Johannesburg on Wednesday afternoon as part of their investigation into the murder of businessman Brett Kebble. National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Lucinda Moonieya said investigators were looking through the company’s financial affairs for documents that would offer evidence of fraud and money laundering.
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/ 28 February 2007
A Sudanese official named as a possible Darfur war criminal said he drew inspiration from the example of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein at his execution in Baghdad in December. Secretary of State for Humanitarian Affairs Ahmed Haroun is accused having ”jointly committed crimes against the civilian population of Darfur”.
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/ 28 February 2007
South Africa can meet the United Nations’s Millennium Development Goals for children as long as it prioritises spending, the UN Children’s Fund country representative told Parliament on Wednesday. Macharia Kamau said South Africa had the finances available to reduce its child mortality rates by two-thirds and its maternal mortality by three-quarters.
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/ 28 February 2007
The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday expressed its ire at the ”preferential treatment” extended to Pretoria High Court Judge Nkola Motata on Tuesday. Court officials had bent over backwards to ensure that Motata’s court hearing was shielded from the public, DA spokesperson Sheila Camerer said.
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/ 28 February 2007
Corruption undermines growth and development by diverting resources away from development programmes, thus increasing poverty and inequality, Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said on Wednesday. She was speaking at the African Forum on Anti-Corruption in Johannesburg.
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/ 28 February 2007
The Bush administration gave up one of the central tenets of its Middle East strategy on Tuesday, reversing its much criticised effort to isolate Iran and Syria by inviting both states to negotiations on stabilising Iraq. The initiative will see the United States and Britain join Iraq and its neighbours in talks to try to rein in the country’s sectarian violence.
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/ 28 February 2007
Mozambique registered a rise of 15% in the number of people who died of the disease last year, news reports said on Wednesday. Health Ministry spokesperson Martinhio Djedje said more than six-million cases of the disease were reported in the country’s public health centres last year.